Background
Erika Papp, a correction officer employed at the Cuyahoga County Corrections Center, was the first female officer to pursue an assignment supervising male inmates after the County implemented a cross-gender supervision policy in late 2017. That policy change resulted from an Ohio Civil Rights Commission Conciliation Agreement that resolved discrimination charges by employees who had challenged the Jail’s prior same-gender-only supervision rule.
Papp alleged she was subjected to ongoing sexual harassment and exhibitionism by male inmates, aggravated by the Jail’s decision to remove sexual harassment as a standalone infraction from the Inmate Handbook just before implementing the new policy. She further claimed that supervisors refused to prevent, discipline, investigate, or bring criminal charges against the offending inmates. Papp sued the County, asserting a hostile-work-environment claim under R.C. Chapter 4112. The trial court granted summary judgment in favor of the County, and Papp appealed.
The Court’s Holding
The Eighth District affirmed summary judgment for the County. The court applied the five-element framework for hostile-work-environment sexual harassment claims, focusing on the critical “remedial” element: whether the employer knew or should have known of the harassment and failed to take immediate and appropriate corrective action.
The court found that the County maintained multiple disciplinary avenues for addressing inmate misconduct, including an internal combination-report process that correction officers could use to initiate discipline. Although Papp argued the Jail should have pursued criminal public-indecency charges, the court noted that criminal referral was only one remedial tool among many and that Papp failed to show the Jail’s internal disciplinary system was inadequate. Papp’s inability to identify specific dates or particular incidents beyond generalized claims further undermined her case.
Key Takeaways
- An employer’s failure to pursue criminal charges against third-party harassers does not automatically establish a failure to remediate when other disciplinary mechanisms exist and are available.
- Generalized allegations of ongoing harassment without specific incidents, dates, or evidence of reporting undermine the plaintiff’s ability to survive summary judgment on a hostile-work-environment claim.
- Ohio courts will examine the full range of corrective measures an employer provides, not just whether the employer chose the harshest possible remedy.
Why It Matters
This decision is particularly relevant to Ohio employment litigators handling hostile-work-environment claims in correctional or institutional settings where the harasser is not a co-employee but a third party such as an inmate or customer. The court signaled that institutional employers with comprehensive internal disciplinary systems satisfy their remedial obligations even without pursuing every available avenue, including criminal referral. Practitioners representing plaintiffs in similar claims should document specific incidents meticulously and demonstrate that the employer’s existing remedial tools were either unavailable or ineffective.